voiced by Kelly Marie Tran), who goes on a quest to find the legendary dragon Sisu (Awkwafina) so that she may rescue her father and heal the land of Kumandra.
Given that Raya has grown up believing the other regions of Kumandra are filled with untrustworthy and cruel people, it is something of a hurdle when she and Sisu must seek the help of those other regions in order to restore the peace of the nation. The themes of trust and community that run through the movie resonant powerfully today, making the latest Disney offering a must-see for parents and children alike.
Screenwriter Qui Nguyen (Blindspotting) spoke to Screen Rant about refining the themes of the film, casting the perfect actors to bring the characters to life, and creating an antagonist worthy of their heroine.
The themes in the story are so relevant, having to come together and heal after all of this division. When you first started working on the script, what was your thematic goal and where did you want to take the story?
Don Hall: Obviously, the film was in development in different iterations for quite a while, and it felt like there was always a gravitational pull to the idea of unity. I think one of the issues that we saw with that, is that it was almost too broad a theme. What we did is just ask the question, "In order to achieve unity, who do you trust?" Trust being the thing that we felt was the strongest thing, we really doubled down on that thematic. It gave us a real opportunity to explore things on different levels.
For Raya, she lives in a world that is broken. Her opinion is that in a broken world, you can't trust anyone. That made for a really rich relationship in partnering her with Sisu, who is a character that is of the opposite opinion: the world is broken because you don't trust anyone. That push and pull really galvanized the whole story and narrative, and wove it together. It was still in an effort to achieve unity, but we were exploring it through the lens of trust.
Carlos López Estrada: Qui, Don and I started working on the movie a little bit over a year and a half ago, and it felt like our thematic elements were so relevant and so timely even then. But, really, every week that ed, they took in a whole new meaning: the pandemic hit, and everything that happened politically and socially made every theme so much more resonant. Honestly, even leading up to last week.
We were joking yesterday, "Qui, did you write Biden's inauguration speech?" Because so many of the ideas that he's talking about and the general philosophy that he's using to approach his new presidency is so in line with many of the things that we're trying to talk about in the movie. It's nice to know that we're going to be part of a hopefully very optimistic conversation.
Qui, what was the collaboration process like with Adele and the directors?
Qui Nguyen: Adele has definitely been, for a long time, one of my writing heroes. She's an important figure in the Asian American community and the writing community there, and I'm such a fan of her and of Crazy Rich Asians. She was just a pleasure.
She had built such a great infrastructure of a world before I came on, and then I had the chance to really hone in on the story and create these characters and the comedic tones of it all. It really was a huge collaboration between her, myself, Don and Carlos. It was one of the greatest pleasures of my career to work with these two guys right here, in particular. It really was like making a movie with your best friends. A lot of laughs, a lot of fun, and a lot of mischief in trying to figure this out.
How did the casting process affect the way developed the characters as the production process went on? Because Raya and Sisu fit Kelly Marie Train and Awkwafina like gloves.
Don Hall: Just to give you a little insight into our process, we do a lot of writing and storyboarding in conjunction to build a story reel that we look at. A lot of times early on, before a movie is cast, we do the voices. I wouldn't be doing Raya, but I did Benja while other folks on the crew would do Raya or whatever.
We're looking at the story overall, to see if it's working and it's clear, and all that kind of stuff. But we're also developing character which, especially for original film, is the hardest thing to do and takes the longest. You're trying to chip away at it, and just trying to learn about who these characters are. At a certain point, when you have enough of that information, then you go to the casting process and it's a little bit clearer to see who could play that.
But the characters don't really come alive until there's that actor, because now the writer can write to that actor. That's what happened on this one. We had this desire to not do a lone, stoic warrior for Raya. We could have could have gone down that road, and there is that element to the character, but we thought it would be great to that with a buoyancy and lightness that Kelly could bring. She'd also give a little bit of a confident swagger to that character, and a little bit of comedy, because that's what Qui was writing towards. Kelly was beyond the perfect choice.
Carlos López Estrada: The amazing thing about animation and the fact that these movies take so long is that the actors come in and record their lines throughout those few years that you're doing production, and that gives you an incredible ability to really build a character with them.
Awkwafina was attached to the movie for a few years, so she would record a few scenes and we would take them back into production. The animators would inspire their movements based on her, the people who are modeling the character would inspire the model based on her, and we would start building the story based on her. Then we would bring it back to her to record another few scenes. It's really a collaboration, and I think that's why you see so much of the actors in the characters. It's not like just they come up and put their voices on tape. It's a lot deeper than that.
Can you talk about fleshing out the oppositional viewpoints of Raya and Namaari in their fractured world?
Qui Nguyen: Yeah, it was really important because the whole theme of this movie was trying to bring people together that had opposing views. When we created our big bad or our antagonist, she had to be a reflection of Raya. She has all the prejudices that Raya has, and she is very much like Raya.
The big difference is Raya got to meet Sisu and her character journey happens a lot earlier than Namaari. But she is a character that we relate to. I think the most interesting bad guys are the ones we sympathize with, like Killmonger in Black Panther or like Darth Vader in Star Wars. You're like, "Oh, I get your story." They're just way more captivating, and that was something I think all three of us were very motivated to do when making her.
